Architecture and Design Network (ADN) continues its 2019/2020 June Freeman lecture series with a lecture entitled “Borderwall as Architecure” with Virginia San Fratello, founding partner of Real San Fratello.
The program will begin at 6pm tonight (January 14) following a 5:30pm reception at the Windgate Center for Art+Design on the UA Little Rock campus.
San Fratello draws, builds, 3D prints, teaches, and writes about architecture and interior design as a cultural endeavor deeply influenced by craft traditions and contemporary technologies. She is a founding partner in the Oakland based make-tank Emerging Objects. Wired magazine writes of their innovations, “while others busy themselves trying to prove that it’s possible to 3-D print a house, Rael and San Fratello are occupied with trying to design one people would actually want to live in”.
She also speculates about the social agency of design, particularly along the borderlands between the USA and Mexico, in her studio RAEL SAN FRATELLO. You can see her drawings, models, and objects in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Virginia San Fratello will discuss the long-term project, Borderwall as Architecture, an important re-examination of what the 700 miles of physical barrier that divides the United States of America from the United Mexican States is, and could be. It is both a protest against the wall and a projection about its future. She will present a series of propositions suggesting that the nearly seven hundred miles of wall is an opportunity for cultural and social development along the border that encourages its conceptual and physical dismantling, the lecture will take the audience on a journey along a wall that cuts through a “third nation” — the Divided States of America.
On the way the transformative effects of the wall on people, animals, and the natural and built landscape are exposed and interrogated through the story of people who, on both sides of the border, transform the wall, challenging its existence in remarkably creative ways. Coupled with these real-life accounts are counterproposals for the wall, created by Virginia’s studio, that reimagine, hyperbolize, or question the wall and its construction, cost, performance, and meaning. Virginia proposes that despite the intended use of the wall, which is to keep people out and away, the wall is instead an attractor, engaging both sides in a common dialogue.
ADN lectures are free and open to the public. No reservations are required. Thank you to our presenting sponsor Malmstrom White and our title sponsors Terracon and Evo Business Environments. Supporters of ADN include the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design, the University of Arkansas Little Rock Windgate Center of Art + Design, the Central Section of the Arkansas Chapter of the American Institute of Architects, the Arkansas Art Center and friends in the community. For additional information contact ArchDesignNetwork@gmail.com.
You are invited to join the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program’s next “Sandwiching in History” tour, which will visit one of Little Rock’s most storied structures, T. H. Barton Coliseum beginning at noon on Friday, January 10, 2020.
Legacies & Lunch kicks off 2020 with a program today at 12 noon, entitled “Off the Grid: Nature, Black Power, & Freedom on the AR Frontier.”
14 – CALS rebrands literary festival as Six Bridges Book Festival. Previously known for 16 years as the Arkansas Literary Festival, this summer, the Central Arkansas Library System announced that starting with the April 2020 event, it would be known as Six Bridges Book Festival.
15 – Museum of Discovery “Shocked the Rock” with 40 feet tall Tesla Coil. Thousands of fans of famed inventor Nikola Tesla (or of the Museum of Discovery) flocked downtown on July 20 to witness the world’s largest Tesla Coil in action at “Shock the Rock!,” a Tesla-themed, free event on the grounds of the Clinton Presidential Center. “Shock the Rock!” was powered by Entergy and presented by the Museum of Discovery.
16 – Artspace Rocks. Over 300 people gathered in July at Mosaic Templars Cultural Center for the Artspace Rocks first public event. It was part-description of what Artspace does, part-celebration of the vibrant Little Rock arts scene, part-networking event, and part-performance. It was all fun!
8 – Dedication of the CALS Bobby Roberts Library. Though the name change had been approved months earlier, there had never been a formal naming event for the Central Arkansas Library System Bobby L. Roberts Library. In April 2019, in conjunction with the inaugural Maurice Smith Distinguished Lecture, CALS rectified it. In the presence of Roberts and many longtime library supporters, President Bill Clinton gave remarks at the event which was a tribute to his former staffer. (Roberts was on Clinton’s gubernatorial staff.)
9 – Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Nina Totenberg. The Kumpuris Distinguished Lecture which took place on September 3, 2019, set records for Clinton School, Clinton Center, and Clinton Foundation programming.
10 – 15 years of the Clinton Presidential Center and Clinton School of Public Service November 18, 2019, marked the 15th anniversary of the opening of the Clinton Presidential Center. This year also marked the 15th anniversary of the U of A Clinton School for Public Service.
Today (December 13) at noon at the Old State House Museum, Kyra Schmidt, a graduate student at the University of Arkansas, will present her research about the female telephone operators’ strike in 1917 in Fort Smith.
The latest Quapaw Quarter Association’s Preservation Conversations will take place tonight, December 12, at 6:00pm, with a 5:30pm reception. Dr. John Kirk will discuss “Race and Housing: How Urban Renewal Changed the Landscapes of Little Rock.”
Little Rock Culture Vulture 